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Ask HN: Do sales figures for Objective C books mean the language is getting more popular?

4 points by firebug ↗ HN
I was looking at O'Reilly's data: http://radar.oreilly.com/assets_c/2009/02/TM_qtr_py_Prog_Lang.html

Made me wonder what kinds of commercial applications Objective C is being used for? Is this the language you use to create iphone apps?

7 comments

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firebug
I'll add a comment so you can click on the link:

http://radar.oreilly.com/assets_c/2009/02/TM_qtr_py_Prog_Lan...

firebug
Also, why is Ruby seeing such a steep decline (-51%)? Does that correspond to the state of the Ruby contracting market? On the other hand, I wouldn't have expected to see such an increase in the popularity of Actionscript. Any theories on what's driving that?
TJensen
Enterprise flex development would be driving ActionScript. I agree with what jdg said about Ruby books.
firebug
Is Flex really such a big deal? I was under the impression that it hadn't really taken off?
TJensen
I would say that it is taking off. Now that BlazeDS is open source, there is less of a barrier to adoption.
jdg
Yes, it is the language used to create iPhone applications.

Yes, the language is probably becoming more popular as more developers learn it, in order to create iPhone applications.

Since iPhone applications are still relatively new, and haven't hit their stride yet, book sales will increase rather than staying steady.

Ruby on the other hand has been "popular" for at least two years now, and it's natural to see a "decline" in book sales, even though the number of developers entering the ruby world may remain the same.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Ruby is relatively easy to pick-up and run with, while Objective-C is, uh, a bit more "complex" (for lack of a better word).

siong1987
There are too many publishers publishing books about Ruby. The market is really very competitive. But, you hardly see many ObjC books in the market right now. This may be the reason why ObjC book sale increases.

If you are using Ruby, you don't have to worry about memory management at all. But, if you are using ObjC, you have to worry about memory management especially if you are developing iphone application.(only iPhone doesn't have GC.)

Anyway, a GCC compiler can actually compile objC, so, it is not actually a Apple only language. Basically, any linux system with GCC compiler can compile objC too.